The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
An ultrasonic wave or ultrasound diagnosis and treatment of human body are under active research and development because it obviates the need for an incision of a human body and thus leaves neither a surgical scar nor the concern for secondary infections in general. Exemplary applications of the ultrasonic wave or ultrasound for the medical field are a diagnosis area such as a fetal diagnosis or a cancer diagnosis and a treatment area such as a lipectomy or destruction of a cancer tissue or malignant tumor.
A HIFU (High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound) is a surgical treatment of burning cancer cells by intensively irradiating the ultrasonic wave on a cancer tissue. Although the HIFU has been known to be developed for treating a prostate cancer, it is gradually extending its applications to a non-solid tumor such as a brain cancer, a uterine myoma and an arrhythmia beyond a solid cancer such as a liver cancer, a breast cancer and a pancreatic cancer and the like. Especially, the HIFU treatment now presents an excellent result in the treatment of a liver cancer and a pancreatic cancer for which a surgical operation is scarcely applicable.
The HIFU treatment has various aspects such as a thermal effect, a cavitation effect, a mechanical effect, a capillary destruction nearby a tumor and an immunity effect. Herein, the thermal effect includes the coagulation of a blood vessel and the necrosis of tumor cells by use of heat above 65 degrees; and the cavitation effect is related to pressurizing cells to cause cell protein to be denatured and thereby destroying DNAs of the tumor. In addition, the mechanical effect is to break the chemical link between cancer cells. The capillary destruction adjacent to the tumor is to prevent the tumor from proliferating by destroying the adjacent capillary so as not to supply nutrition to the tumor as well as a lesion to be treated, and the immunity effect relates to increasing the level of immunity as with increasing lymphocyte by recognizing the tumor cell destroyed after the treatment as an antigen. Among these effects, the thermal effect is one of the most popular kinds.
However, the thermal treatment using the HIFU entails thermal diffusions due to blood flows, resulting in mistimed and/or inadequate treatments.